


Founding the Foundation

by foobar137



Series: The Fletcher-Flynn Foundation [8]
Category: Phineas and Ferb
Genre: Cancer, F/M, Family, Research
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-26 22:04:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/654883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foobar137/pseuds/foobar137
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phineas and Ferb have done hundreds of amazing things, but as they approach their senior year of high school, they take on the biggest challenge ever: curing cancer, even if just for one person. And if they can do it for one, why not more? The next big step in the Back in Time for Dinner timeline; as such, contains some Phinbella and Canderemy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bad News

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here we go. I decided this was the next story that had to be finished, even though Something Special is set earlier. Mainly that was because this one is T rated, while Something Special will be M rated and I know at least some of my audience doesn't want that.
> 
> Credits: some minor ideas are borrowed from karly05 and Lowrider (from fanfiction.net); they're marked at the end of the chapter they first show up in.
> 
> Notes: I suspect the science in this is pretty awful. I'm a computer scientist, not a biologist.
> 
> Warnings: While I'm pretty sure this is clearly in bounds of a T rating, there are a couple mentions of seventeen-year-olds having sex (off screen), which may be more than some readers want. There is absolutely nothing even remotely explicit in this story.
> 
> Dedication: For my mother, taken from us too early by lung cancer. If only there were a real life Phineas and Ferb who could save lives like this.
> 
> Timeline: Summer between Phineas, Ferb, and Isabella's junior and senior years of high school, after Phineas's birthday. Phineas and Isabella are seventeen, Ferb is sixteen.

Isabella had been dragged out to the dress fitting with Candace’s other bridesmaids: Stacy, Jenny, and Susan, a friend of Candace’s from college. Candace’s wedding had been accelerated due to an unexpected pregnancy, so tasks that everyone had thought they had a year to complete suddenly had to be ready for the big day in just three weeks. Fortunately, Candace had everything planned already; it was just a matter of execution.

Isabella pondered what she was going to do in the afternoon - her boyfriend Phineas and his brother Ferb were off with Candace’s fiancé, Jeremy, for tuxedo fittings, and weren’t expected back for an hour or two. Maybe she’d just sit out by the pool and enjoy the warm late-summer day until Phineas got home, and then...well, two seventeen-year-olds with the house to themselves could certainly find _something_ to do. The couple had become lovers just a couple weeks previously, on Phineas's seventeenth birthday, after dating for two years.

As expected, the house was empty when she arrived; her father, Samuel, was at work and her mother, Vivian, had a doctor’s appointment for a breathing problem she’d been having recently. Isabella put on her white bikini and brought a glass of lemonade and her cell phone out to the pool to await Phineas’s return.

Her phone rang. Silently, she hoped it wasn't Gretchen. She and Ferb had broken up a week earlier after going out for a month, and while they had both claimed it was a mutual decision, they both seemed to be taking it harder than anyone expected. Isabella had spent much of the past week consoling her friend and reassuring her that she'd find the right guy eventually; for some reason this just made Gretchen sadder. A quick glance said that it was her father instead.

“Hi, Dad. What’s up?”

“Isabella, are you at home?”

“...yeah, why?”

“You need to come to the hospital. They found what was causing your mother’s breathing problems. It’s...just come.”

“You and Mom have the cars. Should I take a taxi, or wait for Ferb to get back? He can give me a ride.”

“How long until Ferb gets back?”

“They should be home any minute...actually, I think I hear him pulling in.”

“Okay. Get here as soon as you can."

Wishing it had been Gretchen after all, Isabella went out the gate of the back yard and saw Phineas and Ferb getting out of Ferb’s hand-restored hot rod. Phineas smiled to see her, but then his eyes narrowed at the look of concern on her face.

“Ferb, can you give me a ride to the hospital? Apparently my mother’s been admitted with breathing problems.”

“Certainly,” Ferb said. “Would you like to go change first?”

Isabella looked down, realizing she was still in her bikini. “...yeah, that’d probably be a good idea. Be right back.”

* * *

Phineas and Ferb followed Isabella through the halls of the hospital. Finding the right room, they found Vivian lying in a hospital bed looking pale and exhausted. Samuel sat in a chair next to her, holding her hand. Isabella took her mother’s other hand and sat on the edge of the bed.

“So, what’s wrong?”

Samuel looked at Isabella, his eyes red-ringed from tears. “It’s cancer. They’re still tracking down where it came from originally, but it’s spread to her lungs. That’s what was causing the breathing problems.”

Isabella’s eyes widened as she looked at her parents. “Do they think they can treat it?”

“They’re running the biopsies right now, but they didn’t seem optimistic. It depends what they find.”

A tall black woman entered the room wearing a white coat and carrying a clipboard. “Hi, I’m Dr. Washington. You must be Mrs. Garcia-Shapiro’s daughter? She mentioned you, and her son-in-law...?” She looked back and forth between Phineas and Ferb.

“Future son-in-law,” Phineas said, giving Isabella an embarrassed smile. “We’re just seventeen. This is my brother; he gave us a ride here.”

The doctor nodded. “I’m sorry, she just referred to you as _mi yerno_...”

Isabella blushed. “She does that.”

The doctor smiled, then looked at her clipboard. Her expression got more serious, and she said, “The preliminary results came back, and they don’t look good, unfortunately. The cancer has metastasized from her liver into her lungs and possibly other organs. Unfortunately, this type of cancer doesn’t respond very well to chemotherapy - the effective dose required is too high. It intertwines itself with vital healthy tissues, so we can’t just cut it out or kill it with radiation therapy. It’s pretty much beyond the capabilities of conventional medicine to deal with."

Samuel looked over at his wife, looking shocked and pale in the hospital bed. “There’s really nothing you can do, then, is there?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Garcia-Shapiro. We’re going to keep looking into our options, and these are just preliminary results - maybe the final results will be more promising.” Isabella's eyes started to fill with tears as she gave her mother a desperate hug.

Phineas called the doctor over as she headed away. “Hypothetically, if there were something that could go in - a small probe, say - that could physically target the cancer cells, could that help her, or would the damage be too great even with that?”

The doctor thought. “I think it would help, but it’s hard to tell if it would be enough. The cancer cells might leave gaps between other vital cells, and regrowing cells to fill them would take time, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt her any more than the cancer does. But it’s not like that’s even possible.”

Phineas smiled. “No, of course not. That would be ridiculous.”

The doctor gave him a steady look, then continued on her rounds as Phineas looked at his brother.

“Ferb, I know what we’re going to do tomorrow.”

Ferb nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ferb's hot rod borrowed from karly05's Ferbnessa series. Vivian calling Phineas 'mi yerno' ('my son-in-law') borrowed from Lowrider's 'Summer of Love'.
> 
> The story of Candace's unexpected announcement, Gretchen and Ferb's brief relationship, and other events from earlier this summer will appear in 'Something Special' when it's finished.


	2. Two Little Sparks

Isabella hadn't slept well, and she yawned as she wandered over to the Fletcher-Flynn back yard the next morning to find Phineas and Ferb already hard at work.

“What’cha doin?” she asked, puzzled as to why they were on the go so early.

“We’re building a new shrinking submarine. But we’re putting these special cancer detectors on it, and this cellular disruption laser. We’re going to try to help your mother,” Phineas answered.

“Really? Do you think it’ll work?”

Phineas gave her an uncharacteristically serious look. “I honestly don’t know. But I’d rather try it and fail than wonder if it would have worked.”

“Absolutely. Can I help?"

"I was counting on it. It'll take at least two of us to run the sub and one to stay outside as mission control. I was assuming you'd be running the laser."

Isabella nodded. "Sounds good. Let's do this.”

* * *

That afternoon, Phineas, Ferb, and Isabella entered Vivian's hospital room. Samuel sat in the same chair in the same clothes, looking like he hadn't moved at all.

"Any word?" Isabella asked.

Vivian shook her head silently.

Phineas walked over beside the bed and knelt down next to it. “We’ve been working on something that may help. We rebuilt our shrinking submarine and added some tools to it that may help fight the cancer. Would you like us to try it out?”

Samuel snorted. “Phineas, this is no time for your imagination to run away with you.”

Isabella spoke up. “Dad, this isn’t imagination. We’ve been telling you all along - these things are real. The submarine is outside. Should I show it to you?”

Dr. Washington came in. “What’s this about a submarine?”

Phineas stood up. “We’ve built a shrinking submarine with a cellular-disruption laser. We were hoping we could use it to help Mrs. Garcia-Shapiro from within.” He awaited her laughter and derision.

Instead, her eyes narrowed as she looked back and forth between him and Ferb. “You boys are sparks, aren’t you?”

Phineas cocked his head, puzzled. “Sparks?”

“Sorry, local nickname in the hospital. Mad scientists? Reality warpers? Gadgeteer inventors?”

Phineas smiled. “Yes. Yes, we are.”

“I had wondered after your question yesterday if that was what you were up to.”

Samuel interrupted, “Wait, you can’t be serious.”

“I’m completely serious,” she said. “We get them coming in occasionally to help out loved ones. We don’t usually allow them to use our facilities at all unless it’s the patient’s only hope, and only about a quarter of them actually save the patient, but for that quarter, it’s the difference between life and death.” She lifted her clipboard. “And...we’re just about at that point. I got the blood work back after the round of chemotherapy we tried last night. The chemo will kill her faster than the cancer will.”

Phineas turned to Vivian. “We’re willing to try it if you are, but it’s your call.”

Vivian coughed as she tried to speak. Sipping some water to moisten her dry throat, she said in a cracked voice, “I’m willing.”

* * *

Samuel looked at the large submarine as Phineas and Isabella climbed on board. 

“You boys built this. This morning,” he said, looking at Ferb.

Ferb nodded.

“And it will somehow shrink down into that syringe so it can be injected into my wife.”

Ferb nodded again.

The hatch closed, and the radio in the control console came to life with Isabella’s voice. “We’re ready to go, Ferb. Commencing shrinking in 3...2...1...”

The submarine shrunk down into the container of sterile saline placed beneath it. Samuel’s jaw dropped.

“Okay, we’re up the syringe and ready to go,” Isabella said over the radio.

Samuel leaned over to the microphone. “Isabella, I apologize for ever doubting you.”

She giggled. “It’s okay, Dad. It never really mattered before. It was just stuff we did for fun. This time...it’s important.”


	3. Hemoglobin Highway

Ferb delivered the syringe to the nurse waiting outside the operating room, then scrubbed up as the control console was given a quick wipe-down. Inside the operating room, Dr. Washington waited next to the bed that Vivian lay in. The control console was set up nearby, and Ferb spoke into the microphone, “We’re almost ready here.”

Isabella’s voice came back a moment later, “Okay. Getting ready to deploy...Phineas, get over to your own console!”

In the background, faintly, Phineas said, “Awww...”

Isabella sighed.

"Okay, piloting control ready," Phineas said over the microphone.

"Laser control ready," Isabella said.

"Mission control ready," Ferb said.

Dr. Washington looked at the nurses on standby in case something went wrong. "Medical team ready," she said. "Patient ready?"

Vivian nodded.

Dr. Washington said, "Then let's go," and nodded to the nurse with the syringe. The nurse inserted it into the port in Vivian's IV tube. "Injection in three...two...one..." 

The nurse pressed the plunger.

* * *

The submarine tumbled from the pressure pushing it along, spinning end-over-end as it floated down the IV tube and into Vivian's arm. Isabella looked over at Phineas, who was slightly green due to the motion, and heard the gyrostabilizers whine as they attempted to overcome the turbulent motion.

The submarine's rotation slowed as the gyros dampened the spin. Phineas was breathing deeply, trying to keep his lunch inside, and Isabella was feeling a bit green herself.

He turned to the microphone. "We need to find a better launch procedure. Either that, or stock up on barf bags."

They heard scattered laughter from the other end of the radio. Isabella took over managing the radio as Phineas disengaged the automatic stabilizer controls and took control of the sub. "Okay, we are in the vein. Following the flow to the heart, and from there to the lungs," she reported.

The trip through the vein was uneventful, and the trip through the heart only caused a little tumbling, which the gyros easily stabilized. They raced along the pulmonary artery and crossed through into the lungs.

"We're in the lungs," Isabella reported. "Closing in on suspected tumor site one...should be in visual range. And there it is. Sending to your screen - the sensors are picking up a strong cluster of cancerous cells there."

Dr. Washington came over the microphone. "Yes, I see it. Let's go with the plan - short bursts only, and don't destroy too much. Her system is going to need to process the residue, so we don't want to make it work too hard until we get a feel for the results."

"Got it," Isabella responded. "Phineas, take us in. Mission control, we are going in. Weapons are hot."

"You are clear to fire," Ferb said.

Isabella marked several ugly-looking cells with target designators, and pushed the fire pad. The laser targeted the first cell cluster and fired, bursting the cell walls and spilling cytoplasm. "First shot hit. One down, far too many to go."

"We're not getting all of them today," Dr. Washington said. "Manual single-shot targeting is working, so try a small burst."

Isabella flipped a switch and pressed the fire pad again. This time the laser fired at all the marked cell clusters, destroying each one.

"That worked. Ready to test auto-targeting," she reported.

"Looks good. Keep a close eye on the auto-targeting. We can't afford to lose too many healthy cells down there."

Isabella adjusted her controls. "Auto-targeting set, one hundred shot burst. Phineas, prepare for evasive maneuvers from cellular residue."

"Ready when you are, Isabella," he said.

"Firing." The blue laser beam fired out repeatedly, rapidly demolishing the cancerous cells that were choking her mother.

Dr. Washington’s voice came over the microphone. “That looks good, folks. I think it’s time to come out, and we’ll see what the effect has been. How do you plan to get out, anyway?”

Isabella looked over at Phineas, who sat thinking. “Um...”

Isabella shook her head. Planning never was his strong suit.

“Oh, I know. Let’s see if we can get up to the mouth, and she can spit us out.”

“Ew,” Isabella said, sticking her tongue out.

“Well, we’ve got to get out through some orifice. Unless you’d prefer a different one?”

Isabella winced at the images that brought up. “Spit will do fine, I think.”

* * *

Full-size again, Isabella and Phineas waited with Ferb and Samuel in Vivian’s hospital room for the results of their adventure. Vivian was wheeled in from the CT scan room, followed by Dr. Washington.

“So, it looks like you pretty much destroyed this cancer nodule here,” Dr. Washington said, showing before-and-after pictures. “But there’s quite a few of them left. It’s going to take a while to work through them, unless you’ve got a faster way to eliminate them.”

Ferb spoke up, “Taking out that one nodule required about one third of the energy the submarine can carry. You’d have to come back to full size to recharge every two or three nodules.”

Phineas sighed. “I think we underestimated the scale of the problem. We’ll think about it overnight and see if we can come up with a better solution.”

Vivian clasped his hand. “Thank you for trying,” she coughed. “Even if it doesn’t work, I know I’m leaving my daughter in good hands.”


	4. If At First You Don't Succeed

Isabella came over the next morning to find Phineas yawning as he paced back and forth across the back yard. “Hi, Isabella,” he said, stopping long enough to give her a good-morning kiss before resuming his pacing.

He paused again. “How much more battery power can we put in, Ferb?”

“Only enough for one more nodule.”

He sighed. “It’s not enough. We need to be able to take out twenty or thirty in one pass, not three or four. We need something that doesn’t need so much power.”

Isabella leaned against the tree next to Ferb and thought. “Is there something physical we could hit them with? Then we’d be limited by the physical material, and not the energy capacity of the sub. Maybe some of the chemotherapy drugs?”

Phineas stopped mid-pace. “Isabella, you’re a genius! We can add a sprayer that will directly hit the cancer cells with smaller doses of the chemo drugs, and that way we don’t have to use so much that your mother can’t take it! Ferb, Isabella, let’s get started!”

* * *

Phineas and Ferb’s mother Linda was visiting her friend at the hospital when they arrived, sitting across the bed from Samuel.

Phineas said, “Hi, Mom! Mrs. Garcia-Shapiro, we think we have a better solution. We need to talk to Dr. Washington about it.”

“You need to talk to Dr. Washington about what?” the doctor said from the door.

“We think we have a more efficient way of killing the cancer. We take the sub in and directly spray chemotherapy drugs onto the cancer cells. We should be able to use much lower doses because of the direct application, so her system should be able to handle it safely.”

Linda spoke up, “...wait, sub? What sub?”

Dr. Washington looked at her. “These are your boys, right? You must be so proud of them, using their inventing abilities to help others like this.”

Linda narrowed her eyes. “I’m sorry, what inventing abilities? They’ve always been imaginative, but...”

“Mom...come see,” Phineas said.

* * *

Linda looked into the small container that now contained a miniature submarine, on board which was her son and his girlfriend. “That really happened,” she said.

Ferb nodded.

“I didn’t believe it at first either,” Samuel said.

“Didn't Candace claim you had a miniature submarine like that once?" Linda asked.

Ferb nodded again.

"Huh. Maybe she was getting visions from the future, then." She ruffled Ferb's hair as he started to speak. "Or more likely, she was just taking your imagination as real like usual. I need to get to the shop; I'll see you tonight. Tell Phineas and Isabella good luck for me. Samuel, give Vivian a hug for me, and I'll be back when I can."

With that, Linda turned and headed toward the parking lot, not hearing Ferb say, "...but Candace was right."

* * *

Phineas piloted the submarine toward another cancer nodule in Vivian’s lung. Isabella’s voice came over the microphone, “Sprayer is hot.” 

Ferb’s voice responded, “You are clear to fire.”

The auto-targeting picked up the cluster, and a jet of chemotherapy drugs sprayed from underneath the submarine. Phineas corrected the sub’s course as the reaction from the jet threw it off, and then watched the nodule to see what happened.

Isabella asked, “It looks like the cells are...collapsing. Are you seeing the same thing, Mission Control?”

Dr. Washington’s voice cut in, “That looks right. Why don’t you move on to the next nodule and we can come back and check this one after it has some time to settle?”

Phineas spoke into his microphone, “Affirmative. Setting course.”

* * *

Dr. Washington presented the three of them with the results as they recuperated with sodas in the hospital cafeteria. “That was very nice work, folks. You took out over half the nodules in the lungs, and her breathing is already easing, although she’s got a lovely productive cough right now. Seems somebody left a bunch of broken-up cancer cells in there that need to get coughed out.”

“Wow, that much? So, one more pass should clear the lungs?” Phineas asked.

“Right, and that gets rid of the immediate danger. The real long-term trouble is in the liver, though, and I’m not sure how well your solution will work in there. You don’t have the sort of maneuvering room that you do in the lungs, and you’ll need to be more careful about healthy cells.”

“Okay. Can we do another lung pass tomorrow morning, and then an exploratory visit to the liver tomorrow afternoon? We can see how things look down there and try to figure out what we need to do,” Isabella suggested.

Dr. Washington said, “That sounds like a plan.”

“Doctor...I’m curious,” Phineas said. “You said you get occasional sparks in here. Why aren’t their tools in use? I’d expect you’d have some fairly decent ones left over by now.”

She looked at him, puzzled. “You don’t know? Spark inventions don’t work without the spark. Without you or your brother, that submarine outside would be so much scrap.”

Phineas sat back, stunned. “Wait, so most people couldn’t do this sort of thing?”

“You never noticed how reality tends to warp around you? Impossible things happening? Million-to-one odds coming up every time?”

Ferb stared off into the distance. “That...would explain some things.”

Phineas looked confused. "Why didn't we ever notice?"

Ferb said, "Because nothing ever lasted more than a few hours."

“There have been a few sparks who’ve managed to make things work under conventional science. Some think Edison was one. But it’s just not possible, in general. We’d love it if we could get someone to do this sort of thing regularly, but most sparks have to keep inventing new things,” Dr. Washington continued. “They can’t just stick around and do cancer removal, or clear blocked arteries, or shore up potential embolisms, or whatever else needs to be done to help cure someone with an incurable problem.”

Isabella looked at Phineas. “Focus. We need to help my mom tomorrow. After that, we can worry about making this work for everyone.”

Phineas nodded. “Yeah. Your mother is priority one for this.”


	5. No Way Out

The next afternoon, Phineas piloted the submarine into Vivian's liver. _I see what Dr. Washington meant_ , he thought. _I'm getting bored with this already. No way I could do this for more than a week._

The liver was, indeed, a much more cramped environment than the lungs, and they found themselves restricted to the smaller blood vessels leading through it. They found a seam of cancerous growths running up to the vessel they were in, and sprayed it down then used a quick burst from the laser to destroy the withered remains blocking their way.

"Dr. Washington, are you seeing this?" Isabella asked.

"Yes, I see," came the voice over the radio. "This is why we couldn't try radiation to get it out. It's embedded itself through the liver. You're going to have to dig it out like you're mining, I think."

Phineas sighed. This was going to be a tedious job, from the looks of it. Fortunately, today was just reconnaissance; the real work here would be tomorrow. But, he supposed, every bit they got today would be that much less to do tomorrow.

“Let’s head along this seam, then, and when we come out at the other end we’ll call it done for the day. Sound good?” he suggested.

“We’ll see how we’re doing at the other end, but that sounds like a good start. If it looks like too much, we can turn around and go back,” Isabella replied.

It was surreal, he thought. They traveled along a hole they were making with toxic drugs and lasers, a man-made tunnel in Isabella’s mother’s liver, the only sight to either side the walls of the tunnel, targets ahead and an opening behind.

He heard a buzzing noise from Isabella’s console. “Phineas, I’m getting a warning from the laser. It looks like a power coupling has come loose, and we’re down to half power,” she reported.

“Can we still get through with the laser at half power?” he asked.

“Maybe not,” Ferb replied over the radio. “I’d suggest returning the way you came, since there’s no easy way to know how much further you’d have to go.”

“Bringing her about, then,” Phineas reported as he rotated the submarine to return down their tunnel.

Only to find that it was closing up behind them, the slick walls coming together to close the gaps left by the destroyed cancer cells and crush the remnants of those that were only poisoned.

“Ferb, we can’t go back, the tunnel’s closing behind us. Heading forward again, and hoping we can get through somehow,” Isabella said, a hint of fear in her voice.

“Roger. Keep going, we’ll see what we can do at this end,” Ferb said.

* * *

Dr. Washington looked concerned. “Do we know exactly where they are?”

“No. In the liver somewhere, but we can’t pin it down better than that, and by the time we got something back from radiology, they’d have moved. We can go off the model from the latest CT scan and try to guess where they ended up, but that’s about the best we can do.”

Dr. Washington’s shoulders slumped. “Can you bring up the model on the console and try to make projections?”

* * *

Isabella kept a close focus on her tasks, because that was all that was keeping her from screaming. Spray any visible cancerous cells, then fire the laser to clear the way to the next set, then wait while Phineas brings the sub forward some more. Don’t think about the tunnel closing behind you. Don’t think about the dead end in front of you. Keep up the rhythm. Spray. Fire. Move.

Ferb’s voice came over the radio. “If my estimates of where you are and your movement rate are right, you should be approaching a capillary soon.”

Isabella said, “Got it.” Spray. Fire...nothing happened. A new alert sound came up from her panel. “Looks like the other power coupling just gave out. We have no laser. Repeat, no laser.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to keep her fears under control.

Phineas leaned back against his headrest. “So close. The chemo will damage what’s ahead of us, but not enough for us to get out.”

“You’re going to have to burst through it,” Ferb said over the radio.

“We don’t know how far we’re going to have to go, and we’re going to need a quick exit if we do, then. The sub is likely to take enough damage that we won’t make it up to the salivary glands. What’s your suggestion?” Phineas asked.

Dr. Washington came over the radio again. “I think your best bet is to go for the kidneys and through there to the bladder.”

Isabella and Phineas simultaneously said, “Ew!”

Ferb said, "There aren't any better alternatives nearby."

Isabella looked at the scanners. “The tunnel’s closing up behind us,” Isabella said. “We need to go now.”

“Clear the way as best you can, Isabella,” Phineas said.

She fired the chemo sprayer at the cells in front of them, and Phineas charged the submarine through the withered remains left behind. A series of thumps indicated cell remains that Phineas wasn’t able to avoid. Klaxons started to blare as damage reports showed up on both consoles. Isabella kept spraying as they went forward. A jet of liquid started spraying in from a leak in the top of the sub. The thumping continued, increasing in frequency as damage made the sub harder to control. 

"Ferb, any estimate how much farther? We can't take much more of this." Phineas asked.

"Anywhere from right in front of you to another three minutes. Sorry, telemetry wasn't a priority when we built it," Ferb said, stress creeping into his voice.

And then, suddenly, with one last wrenching sound from above them, they burst through the final layer of cells. They were clear and back in the bloodstream.

Isabella closed her eyes and slumped in her seat, taking a deep breath as relief ran through her. Shaking her head, she checked her console and reported, “We’ve got a small leak, the sprayer is offline, the laser is...apparently _gone_ , but we’re out.”

“The nose is badly dented and it’s slowing us down,” Phineas added.

“I’ll try to patch the leak, Phineas. Try to keep it steady so I don’t get thrown around too much.” Isabella unbuckled herself from the seat and headed to the emergency locker, retrieving a small steel patch and some quick-setting epoxy. She mixed up the epoxy and dabbed a bit of it on the hole, slowing the leak a little, then spread the rest over one side of the steel patch. Working quickly, she slid the patch over and pressed it down, holding it for a few minutes while the epoxy set. A small trickle had worked its way around the patch, but the leak was considerably slowed. She buckled back in as Phineas prepared to enter the kidney.

“We’re coming in low on power,” Phineas said. “We’ll have enough reserve to unshrink, but that’s about it.”

“Understood,” Ferb said over the radio.

They tumbled down the ureter into the bladder. “Okay, we are in the bladder,” Phineas reported. “Please apologize to Mrs. Garcia-Shapiro for me.”

“No apology needed, Phineas,” she said in the background. “Hand me the bedpan, please.”

* * *

Phineas lay back on the couch at home that evening, stroking Perry and running through the day’s activities in his head. _What did we do wrong? What can we do better? Can we fix the submarine, or are we better off rebuilding a new one? How can we deal with the liver cancer?_

_Will I be able to sleep tonight? That was entirely too close a call today. Isabella could’ve gotten hurt._

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. Setting Perry aside to answer it, he was pleasantly surprised to find Isabella and her father.

"Hi, your mother invited us over for dinner?" Samuel said.

"Come in, you two," Linda said from behind Phineas. "Dinner's almost ready. Did I forget to tell you, Phineas? I didn't figure they were up to cooking much tonight, and might like a home-cooked dinner."

* * *

Dinner was surreal, Isabella thought. Her mother's cancer was the elephant in the room that nobody wanted to mention, so conversation went everywhere else - Candace's wedding and unexpected pregnancy, college plans for Isabella and the boys, the latest odd finds for Linda and Lawrence's antique shop. Finally, the dishes were cleared away and Isabella, Phineas, and Ferb went into the living room as their parents sat around the kitchen table with their coffee.

Ferb spoke first. "I think I figured out the problem with the laser."

Isabella and Phineas looked at the green-haired boy inquisitively.

"We've never had anything last for three days before. We never planned on anything surviving that long, so the clips holding the power couplings in place weren't designed to last for more than a few hours. That was their fourth trip in, and the second one where they were under heavy use."

Phineas nodded. "Designing things to work in the real world is going to be harder than I thought."

Ferb nodded. "I've got some ideas for the submarine that I want to sketch out for tomorrow," he said, and headed upstairs to the room he had claimed when Candace moved out.

Isabella slid along the couch next to Phineas, and he put his arm around her. She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed.

"Penny for your thoughts," he said.

She smiled at him faintly. "Sorry. I'm just tired. It's been a long few days, and I haven't been sleeping very well."

"I can understand that. I haven't been sleeping so well myself. And I don't think I'll sleep any better tonight. We cut it far too close for comfort today."

Hesitantly, she asked, "Do you think our parents would mind if I spent the night here? I'm not up to doing anything but sleep, but..."

"I don't think it'd be a problem - they let us go on the camping trip together. I could use some company to keep the bad dreams away, myself. Perry seems to spend every night with Ferb these days."

She nodded in understanding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First time the characters surprised me in this one: Isabella asking to spend the night. I hadn't planned to go into that part of their relationship at all in this story, but she insisted. (No, nothing explicit. I promise.)


	6. The Impossible Takes a Little Longer

Phineas woke up slowly the next morning, lying on his side, facing the edge of his narrow twin bed. Isabella’s arm was wrapped around his bare torso; he could feel her soft nightshirt pressed up against his back. His brain felt clearer; he had slept much better than he had all week. They hadn't just gone directly to sleep last night after all, but had found pleasant exhaustion in each other.

He tried to slip out of bed without waking her, but, as soon as he moved, her arm tightened around him and she murmured sleepily in protest. Smiling, he relaxed back into her and enjoyed the feeling of just lounging in bed with the woman he loved.

That lasted about three minutes, before his aversion to staying still took over. He rolled over onto his back and slid an arm underneath her, sliding it around her shoulders as she curled up against him. Her leg hooked around his, warm through the thin fabric of his pajama pants. Idly, he stroked her hair as he thought through the plans for the day. _We need a way to clear out an entire seam of growth without leaving the blood vessels. But that’s impossible._

He smiled as he came to a realization. _That’s okay. We do the impossible._

Isabella leaned up and kissed him. “Good morning, Phineas. Did you sleep okay?”

He hugged her, and said, “Yes, yes I did. Somebody kept the bad dreams away last night. How did you sleep?”

She sighed contentedly and burrowed into his shoulder. “Very nicely. Somebody kept the bad dreams away from me, too. Or maybe they just wore me out.”

He laughed and kissed the top of her head.

* * *

Phineas paced the yard again, waiting for Ferb, as Isabella watched from her position sitting against the tree. Ferb came through the back door clutching a new blueprint.

"What've you got for us, Ferb?" Phineas asked.

Ferb showed him the blueprint.

"Hm. Using the frame of the old sub but rebuilding around it from scratch - that should let us build faster. Much more durable. Redundancy on critical systems. Telemetry system so you can track us. 30% increase in battery power - nice. I just have one thing to add. We need to swap out the second laser."

Ferb raised an eyebrow.

"I've been thinking about what Dr. Washington said, about how we do impossible things, and it finally occurred to me that we should make that work for us. I can only blame lack of sleep for why I didn’t think of this earlier.” He smiled at Isabella, who blushed. “We can't do that when we're trying to release this to the public, but for saving Isabella's mom, I say we use whatever capabilities we can."

Isabella looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"I got some cellular residue off the old submarine, and I think I can use it to distinguish between the cancerous cells and her normal cells. I think we build a beam weapon that will use the cancer cells themselves as an energy source and echo that energy into the next cancer cell. If it works, it should look kind of like the disintegrating laser from Space Adventure, and how it can disintegrate a single person without hurting the chair he’s sitting in. I think if we do it right, we can get away with just one shot per seam in the liver, so we'll have plenty of energy to wipe them all out in one pass."

Isabella's eyes got wide. "But that's...oh."

"Exactly. It's impossible. So what? That's never stopped us before."

* * *

Dr. Washington advised them as they prepared, "Since Vivian is out of immediate danger, this is the last time I can use hospital facilities to help you with this. Now that the metastasized nodules are gone from her lungs, she's a candidate for liver transplant if this doesn't work."

"Got it," Phineas said. "If this works, we won't need another shot anyway. And then we can work on finding a way to make this usable by anyone."

Dr. Washington gave him a curious look. "You still think you can do that?"

"We've done half a dozen impossible things so far on this project. What's one more?"

She shook her head. "Fair enough. Good luck, then."

* * *

Traveling along the capillaries was making Isabella feel claustrophobic again. _This isn't the same,_ she thought. _We're staying in the blood vessels this time. No chance of getting trapped._

She shook her head and prepared for work. Their first target zone was coming up soon. "Approaching target," she reported into her microphone. "Echo laser is hot."

"You are clear to fire," Ferb replied over the radio.

She targeted the growth just barely sticking into the capillary and pressed the activation pad. "Firing," she reported, as the laser destroyed the growth and begun to echo down the seam. The tunnel created by the destruction of the cancerous cells was kept open by cellular residue being flushed out, then suddenly it closed.

Phineas let out a whoop of triumph. "It worked! It totally worked!"

"Okay, let's run a quick CT scan to confirm before you fire again," Dr. Washington's voice came over the radio.

Phineas piloted the sub to their next target while they awaited the results, then moored it along the side of the blood vessel. He slid his seat over next to hers and grasped her hand while they waited.

"It'll be okay," he said quietly. "We've got this."

"I know, I'll just feel a lot better when we're out of here."

The radio turned on again with Dr. Washington's voice. "Okay, CT scan results look good. There's another eight notable seams of cancer to take out, and I don't see anything else."

Phineas slid his seat back along the track to the piloting station and disengaged the mooring clamp as Isabella targeted the nearby seam. "Firing," she reported.

* * *

"Okay, we're lined up on the final seam," Isabella reported.

"Be careful," Ferb said. "This one’s big and loops around on itself, so it may spray back in unexpected ways."

"Roger," Phineas said. "Moving over so we're out of the line of fire. Isabella, can you target from here?"

"Target is clear. Ready to fire," she said.

Phineas smiled. Almost done. One last shot and they could be done, and his future mother-in-law would be cured, and he could work on making miniaturization technology functional for everyone.

"You are clear to fire," Ferb reported.

Isabella said, "Firing."

The laser shot out and, as predicted, several pulses of cellular residue shot out of the resulting tunnel. Phineas noticed an odd bulging on the blood vessel wall near them. "What's that?" he asked, just as it burst. A high-pressure spray hammered them into the opposite wall of the blood vessel. From the back of the submarine he could hear the electrical discharge as the power cells shorted, and then everything in the sub went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, it’s odd. Here we have shrinking submarines and disintegrating lasers that even the characters claim are impossible, and what am I having the hardest time justifying in my head? Two people sharing a twin bed and actually getting a good night’s sleep.


	7. Powerless

Samuel was giving his wife a hug. Dr. Washington let out a deep breath as she sat down. The nurses started getting ready to cart things off.

Ferb spoke into the microphone, "Isabella, did it work?"

There was no answer.

"Isabella? Phineas? Are you there?"

Dr. Washington stood up again, walking over to the console.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"I'm not getting a response. Boosting signal," he replied. Turning to the microphone again, he called for any response.

There was nothing.

* * *

A battery-powered emergency light flickered on, dimly illuminating the interior of the sub. Phineas looked over at Isabella, curled up in her seat hugging her legs.

“Isabella, are you okay?”

“No,” she whispered. She appeared to be shaking in her seat.

He unbuckled from his seat and ran over to her. “Are you hurt?”

“No, just...” She looked at him with a panic-stricken look, and then grabbed onto him like a drowning man grabbing a life preserver.

He held her for a minute, feeling her shakes subside as she took some deep breaths. “Come on, let’s go see what happened to the power cells.”

She unbuckled herself with one hand, her other hand refusing to let go of his. Together, they carefully stepped toward the power room in the back.

Opening the hatch, they were confronted with the sharp smell of ozone. They found that the power cells had been knocked around in the impact. One had come loose from its bracket, disconnecting it from the circuit; the bracket itself had gone flying and briefly bridged the other seven power cells into a short circuit before it melted.

“Come on, let’s see if there’s any power left in any of these,” he suggested.

Checking the meters on the cells, only the disconnected one had any power in it, and that one not much. “Help me put it back in place, Isabella,” Phineas said. Dully, she nodded and helped him shove it back until it lined up with the power connectors. He grabbed some wire from the tool kit and repaired the broken circuit, causing the main lights to come on and beeping noises from the cockpit. “Let’s go see if the radio’s working,” Phineas suggested.

Isabella hugged Phineas tightly and took a deep, calming breath before releasing him. "Okay, let's go," she said, grasping his hand again.

* * *

Ferb brought up the telemetry and superimposed it over the model of Vivian’s liver. “So they were here when they fired the shot,” he said, pointing to their location, “and then something hit them and pushed them into the wall.” The model showed the impact, and then the sub vanished from the telemetry entirely. “And that’s the last data we have.”

Samuel and Dr. Washington looked at the model. “What could have caused it? The impact must have come from this loop of cancerous growth here, if the angle is right,” Dr. Washington said.

Ferb sat back a moment in thought. “Yes, that would do it. As the echo pressure propagated, it would come into this loop from both sides and then the detonation at the junction would cause a pressure shock that could burst out and hit the sub. They were just in the wrong place.”

Samuel looked at him. “So what happened to them?”

Faintly, Isabella's static-filled voice came over the radio. "Ferb? *zzz* hear me?"

Everyone swiveled toward the radio; Ferb dove for the microphone. "I hear you, Isabella," he said, his voice full of relief. “Are you okay?”

"We *zzz* blowback. No leaks, *zzz* power cells got shorted *zzz*-ing loose in the blood-*zzz* almost no power."

"Can you guide yourself in any way?"

"*zzz* drifting between blood vessels but *zzzz* control otherwise."

Ferb looked up at Dr. Washington. "Tell them to get to any orifice they can," she advised. "We'll get 'em out however we have to. If necessary, we can run dialysis to get them, although I have no idea how we're going to justify it to the insurance company."

* * *

Isabella turned off the radio to conserve what power they had left. Phineas was back among the power cells, seeing if he could find some more energy somewhere. The deep shadows from the emergency lighting seemed to flicker at the edge of her vision; they’d turned the main lighting off again as well.

Isabella stared at her useless controls. _No, the walls are not closing in on me. They are not. It's just in my head. Phineas will find a way to get us out of this._

Phineas came back into the control room. "It looks like the other power cells are completely dead. The short circuit really did a number on them. We’re lucky that that one got disconnected before the short."

Isabella closed her eyes. Phineas crossed the short distance to her chair to kneel beside it and give her a hug. "It'll be okay. Worst case, they do something like dialysis and filter us out that way."

"And how do we get back to full size? There isn't anywhere near enough power to unshrink us. And that’s assuming we can keep life support running until they can start dialysis."

Phineas sat back on his heels. "Well...hm. I think our best bet would be to set up something to receive power wirelessly..." He stared off into space briefly. "Wait, that works. We can jury-rig a wireless power receiver that energizes off of X-rays, and then they can run another CT scan. They were going to have to do that anyway, this way we can get some juice out of it. Call up Ferb and let him know what we're going to need, I'll start working on the receiver."

* * *

"*zzz* X-rays to generate power. When I tell you *zzzzz* then run a CT scan," Isabella said faintly over the radio.

"Sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you. You're going to generate power from X-rays, so we should run a CT scan once you're set?" Ferb asked.

"Yes," Isabella answered. "Phineas wants *zzzzz* X-ray wavelength."

Dr. Washington said, "I'll call radiology and find out."

"We're checking," Ferb told Isabella.

* * *

"Phineas, he said the wavelength was one hundred picometers," she called back to the power banks.

"Okay. Converting to our current size, that's...about a tenth of a millimeter. Excellent. Charging antenna is set up. Tell them to fire at will."

She turned the radio back on. "We're ready, Ferb."

Faintly, her radio picked up his reply. "Activating in three...*zzzz*...one...now."

Her console blared a brief alarm as it rebooted, coming back up with power restored. "Ferb, we have one power cell at 20%," she reported.

Phineas ran back in and buckled himself into his seat. "Let's get out of here," he said. "Heading for the salivary glands. We've got enough juice to get there and unshrink."

* * *

Isabella climbed out of the submarine with great relief. "I don't think I ever want to get in a submarine again," she said to Phineas, exiting just after her. "Not even the ones at Disneyland."

"I can't say I blame you," he responded.

Isabella got off the ladder and was immediately swept up in a hug by her father. "You're back. You did it. Dr. Washington just got the CT results - no sign of any more tumors," he said.

Isabella started to cry into her father's shoulder, relief from the past week and the past hour combining to shatter her self-control. Samuel held her as she cried herself out and was able to catch her breath. Looking over his shoulder, she saw Dr. Washington escorting a nurse wheeling her mother out in a wheelchair. "Mom?" she said, incredulous at seeing her outside the building.

"Yes, Isa. The doctor says I need some rest for my system to process all the dead cells and clear out the toxins in my system, but I might be able to go home tomorrow. Thanks to you, and Ferb, and _mi yerno_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, resolution. Two more chapters to go - what can be in them? Wasn't there supposed to be a wedding coming up soon?


	8. The Wedding Present

The next morning, the submarine was gone from the backyard, with no trace except some platypus tracks. Phineas shrugged and went on, mostly surprised it had lasted as long as it had.

They got to work on finding a way to make miniaturization work in normal physics. Ferb quickly determined that the lasers and cancer-seeking sensors were going to be more work over and above miniaturization, so they put those on the back burner.

Phineas realized that the key to it was Isabella. As a non-gadgeteer who had been deeply involved in building the submarines, she could give him and Ferb a reference for what a 'normal' person could do. After a week of research and testing, they had a plan for how to make it all work without violating any of the laws of physics.

Ginger and Baljeet were invited over to do test builds after Isabella refused. The first two subs failed to work due to small things they’d overlooked, but the third time, Ginger and Baljeet successfully shrank down and re-enlarged themselves, with Isabella adamantly looking in the other direction the whole time.

It was almost time to take it to the public, but they had one important thing to do first.

* * *

Candace's wedding came just one week before the end of the summer. Phineas took special pride in seating the Garcia-Shapiros in his role as usher. Vivian was still somewhat weak, but had largely recovered over the past week and a half.

Finally, the moment arrived. Phineas stood at the front of the church with Jeremy, Coltrane, Ferb, and Joe, a friend from college and Susan's boyfriend. The music changed and the bridesmaids entered in pale blue dresses. Susan led the way, followed by Isabella, Jenny, and finally Stacy as maid of honor. Suzy, Jeremy’s sister, came in next as flower girl, wearing a white dress and carrying a bouquet of pale blue flowers.

The organist struck up the familiar strains of Wagner, and Candace entered the sanctuary on her father's arm. Her dress was elegant in its simplicity, white silken falls displaying her long and lean build, a ring of flowers woven into her hair with colors matching the bridesmaids' dresses. Jeremy caught his breath, a whispered "Oh" escaping his lips as he gazed at his bride. Phineas looked over at Isabella, who was staring at Candace with her eyes sparkling, and pondered a day when he'd be standing in Jeremy's spot as Isabella came up the aisle to him. He didn't find the thought quite as distressing as he expected. Not really something to jump into now, but...not something to be terrified of either.

Phineas didn't pay close attention to the ceremony, instead trying to figure out why he was calmer than he had thought he would be about the idea of doing this with Isabella. He hadn't found an answer yet when he was jerked back to reality by the presentation of the rings and the pastor's announcement of the new Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. As Candace and Jeremy led the way back down the aisle, he offered his arm to Isabella and they followed Ferb and Jenny to the reception.

* * *

Isabella watched Stacy and Susan jockeying for position for the bouquet toss, jokingly threatening each other as their boyfriends Coltrane and Joe stood to one side chatting. Phineas stood near them, smiling at her. She decided she didn't need to fight the two women who clearly both wanted the bouquet, and took a position off to one side.

Candace turned her back to the assembled women and tossed her bouquet over her shoulder, arcing it high into the middle of the crowd. Stacy and Susan both jumped for it like basketball players at tip-off, and only succeeded at knocking it away from either of them. Isabella saw it coming at her without quite recognizing it, and caught it by reflex. Understanding dawned, and she looked at Stacy and Susan in concern. The two of them were laughing so hard they had to lean on each other for support. Relieved on one count but suddenly disturbed on another, she looked at Phineas, who was also laughing. Walking up to her, he gathered her up in a hug and a tender kiss to the applause of the crowd.

* * *

Candace caught her breath from dancing as her new husband made a quick trip to the men’s room, and watched her friends enjoy the reception. Movement toward her caught her attention, and she saw Phineas, Ferb, and Linda coming over in her direction.

"What's up?" she asked.

"We brought you your wedding present," Phineas said. "It was Ferb's idea."

Candace raised an eyebrow.

Phineas turned to Linda. "Mom, we need to tell you. Candace has been telling the truth the whole time. We really did all those things she told you about. All of them. The roller coasters. The time machines. The trip around the world...oh, wait, she never told you about that one."

Linda teared up. "Oh, boys. You've always had such active imaginations. It's so nice of you to support your sister, but she got over the need to bust you years ago. It's okay. Tell her about the submarine, she might be sorry she missed it. She finally would have had something really bustable that I saw." She walked over toward the dance floor, where Lawrence awaited her.

Candace looked back and forth between her brothers. "You guys just tried to bust yourselves. For me."

Phineas was looking at Linda, his mouth hanging open. "B-b-but..."

Ferb shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry, Candace. We tried."

Candace smiled as the implications of what had just happened hit her. "Not even you two could bust you. It wasn’t just me." She grabbed her brothers in a hug. "Thank you. That really means a lot to me."

As she released them from the hug, she saw that Phineas had tears in his eyes. “Hey, what’s wrong?” she asked.

“It’s just kind of all hitting me. You’re not just our sister anymore. You’re somebody’s wife. In January, you’re going to be somebody’s mom.”

She sighed, reaching up to ruffle his hair, then over to ruffle Ferb’s. “But you’ll always be my little brothers. Always.”

Ferb gave her a hug. “Jeremy is a lucky man. And that’s a lucky child. You’re going to be a great mom.”


	9. Going Public

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. One major thing left to tie up - what the heck is up with the title?

Candace and Jeremy had caught a flight to Hawaii for their honeymoon that morning; now Phineas, Ferb, and Isabella looked at the submarine in the Fletcher-Flynn backyard and thought about their next step.

Phineas scratched the back of his head. “I don’t know, how do we take this public now? Do we just take it downtown and start showing it off?”

Isabella said, “My dad’s a patent attorney. He knows a lot of inventors, maybe he has some ideas. Let’s go ask him.”

* * *

Samuel, sitting on the couch, looked up at the trio. “So, you’ve figured out how to make it work, eh? And now you want to take it public? Sit, let’s talk.”

Ferb took a chair as Phineas sat in the love seat next to Isabella, holding her hand. Phineas spoke up, "The idea is to make the information available so anyone can use it freely. While it’s not quite as useful as the one we used was - no cancer-killing lasers, unfortunately - it could still do incredible things, and not just medical. Structural inspection, for example. We’re not sure how we get it out there, though."

"Okay. I’m a patent lawyer, so that’s how I tend to think. ‘If all you have is a hammer’ and all that. So, first thing, you document what you’ve done and how it works so that anyone who wants to could reproduce it. You file a patent on it, and then license it however you want.”

“We want to give it away,” Phineas said. The science was out there for anyone to find; how could he try to force people to pay him to use it?

“Okay, so you license it freely. Holding the patent makes it harder for anyone else to sneak in a claim on it. Do you want to hold the patent yourselves, or create something to hold it for you? A non-profit foundation could manage it and any other patents you file, and that gives you some legal separation from them.”

“Okay, that sounds good. Who do we need to talk to?”

Samuel laughed. “That would be me. What do you want to call this foundation?"

Phineas looked at Ferb and Isabella. "Well, just off-hand I'd use our names. The Fletcher-Flynn-Garcia-Shapiro Foundation."

Isabella blushed a bit and said, "Fletcher-Flynn Foundation flows a lot better."

"Your part is important too," Phineas insisted.

"Yes, but this way we don't need to change the name in a few years," she replied.

Ferb shook his head and Samuel chuckled as Phineas fell back on the love seat. "Oh," Phineas said in a small voice.

* * *

The patent had been filed, although it would take time to wend its way through the bowels of the patent office. The foundation had been set up to hold the patent rights. Samuel, Linda, and Lawrence were in charge of it, in trust for their children until they reached eighteen next year. Samuel arranged for a press conference with demonstration.

After the demonstration, the few reporters who had shown up started asking questions. "How does this not violate the first law of thermodynamics? You're creating and destroying mass."

Phineas took up the microphone. "We're not creating or destroying anything. We're temporarily stashing particles in an alternate dimension that happens to be empty. Then, to reverse, we pull the particles back. Thermodynamics still holds across the set of universes."

"So, you've filed for a patent for this, but are giving the patent rights to anyone who wants to use it? Why?"

Isabella leaned toward the microphone. "It wouldn’t feel right to charge for access to this. It would feel like we were charging people to use gravity."

Another reporter asked, "You've said you intend to find more nontraditional science that you can make available to everyone. Do you have any idea what sort of thing you'll do next?"

Phineas spoke up again. "We haven't decided yet. Right now the plan is to finish up high school and go to college to get a grounding in what's conventionally possible."

* * *

Vanessa watched the news from the trading floor of her job on Wall Street. A coworker shook his head at it.

"I don't get it," he said. "That patent was worth billions - billions! With a 'b'! And they're just _giving_ it away."

"They said they want everyone to have access to this."

"Me, I want to retire at 30. Get a patent like that and I wouldn't have to wait even that long." He sighed. "Okay, I'm going to go work on which stocks will be affected by this. Maybe we can make some money on the deal anyway."

Vanessa watched the news until the segment ended, then went back to her desk and pondered. _Dad built stuff like that all the time, but it never worked for anyone but him. It didn't work for anyone including him, most of the time._

_Maybe Ferb's on to something there. And working on that sounds a lot more interesting than staying here. Maybe it's time to look into graduate school._

* * *

Phineas and Ferb were just getting back from the first day of their senior year of high school when their mother met them at the door. "Boys, I have good news for you."

"Taco night tonight?" Phineas asked hopefully.

Linda laughed. "Even better. Samuel just called. Apparently the Page Foundation has decided to fund your research. They gave enough money to the Fletcher-Flynn Foundation to pay for college for all three of you, with some to spare."

* * *

Isabella snuggled up with Phineas on the couch, full of Phineas’s mother’s tasty tacos. "I guess we don't need to worry about paying for college," she said.

"Now we just need to worry about which college to go to. Can we find one for both of us? Maybe all three of us? One that has a good business school for you, a science school for me, and an engineering school for Ferb?"

"Is it that important to you that we go to the same place?"

"I've heard too many horror stories of couples splitting up after they go off to different colleges. Candace and Jeremy barely stayed together that first year he was at college, and he was just going to Danville University." Phineas paused, and looking her in the eyes, said, "And...I don't want to be away from you that much. I was kind of hoping that we'd be able to get an apartment together, like Jeremy and Candace did when she was a sophomore."

"Would our parents go for it?" Isabella asked.

"My parents let Candace do it. And, right this minute, your parents seem to think I walk on water."

Isabella chuckled. "That they do." She brushed his cheek with her hand. "I can think of few things I'd like better than to wake up with you every morning. But that would require somewhere that doesn't require us to live on campus, since I don’t think they’ll let us share a dorm room."

"That takes out most of the Ivy League schools. Excellent schools for all of us, but they generally want freshmen to live in the dorms."

"Danville University isn't known for a good business school, unfortunately," Isabella noted.

Ferb's voice came from the entryway to the kitchen. "I have heard that the Quad-State Institute of Technology has been building up their business school recently. They're certainly known for their science and engineering programs."

"Really? I hadn't considered Quasi-Tech." Isabella asked, "What are their rules on freshman housing?"

Ferb sat down with his laptop. "They recommend but do not require on-campus housing."

"It's in Marshwood, right? That's only three hours away - far enough that Mom and Dad won't drop in unannounced, but close enough that we can come back to visit easily," Phineas said.

"Ferb, let me see the info on the business school? This is sounding like a solution that works for all of us," Isabella added.

Phineas looked at his brother and girlfriend. "Ferb, Isabella...I know what we're going to do next year."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quasi-Tech and Marshwood (guess where that name came from, eh?) will show up more in "What's Up, Doc?" which should start showing up here within the next couple weeks. I have a couple shorter pieces that will be coming out by next weekend.
> 
> I want to thank everyone who's read this far. Your attention is a gift for which I am endlessly grateful.
> 
> Additionally, I want to thank Dan and Swampy for creating the show that got me writing again after all these years.


End file.
